Never Look Back

by Alison Gaylin

  She found the town borderline monstrous in its perfection these days, a gracious matriarch who’d undergone one too many facelifts. And the Tarry Ridge police headquarters was a perfect example. She remembered visiting the station with her fourth-grade class, and it had been a third this size back then—a simple brick colonial building with a patch of lawn out front. Perfectly reasonable for its purposes. Now, it had a rose garden out front—ten varieties of roses!—and the inside was even sillier in its excess. The interview room where Morasco had taken her could have probably held an entire New York City precinct house. She peered around the room—the freshly painted cream walls, the leather cushions on the chairs, the enormous plexiglass table that looked as though it had been shipped in from MoMA. One chair had been pulled up to the table, on which had been placed a digital recorder and some bagged items—a belt, a watch, a wallet, and wedding ring, and various other items that had been found on Quentin. “Thanks for setting this up for me,” Robin said.

  “Actually,” said Morasco, “this is all for Dean Conrad. I’m sneaking you in early.”

  “Oh yes. Of course.”

  “How’s your mom doing?”

  Robin looked at him. “She says she remembers less now about that night than when it actually happened.”

  “That’s a blessing.”

  “I guess.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” he said. “What made you decide to listen to the recording?”

  “Well . . . I read about the note in the New York Post.”

  “Yeah, we’re thrilled about that.”

  “I know. The leak sucks,” Robin said. “But I was glad I saw it because there was something weird about the note. I want to see if he talks the same way in the audio.”

  “What do you mean by weird?”

  “Okay.” She set the headphones down. “So, I did a little research on Quentin Garrison online. This was before the suicide. Back when I was just curious about him.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d apologize to ‘friends and family.’ I mean, what family?”

  He blinked at her.

  “I guess when I say it out loud, it doesn’t exactly sound like a smoking gun.”

  Morasco gave her a sad smile. “He was a troubled guy,” he said.

  “You’re sure about that.”

  “He had a record. We didn’t see it right away because it happened when he was a minor. Shoplifting. Selling pot. An assault charge—a street fight, I guess. After a concert.”

  That son of Kate’s was a handful and then some. Pretty much scared me off having kids of my own. “None of those things were murder,” Robin said.

  “No. But he was only sixteen.” Morasco moved toward the door. “Also the clerk at his hotel said that a couple of days after the shootings, right before he disappeared, he came storming into the lobby and shouted at him for no reason. Scared the hell out of the other guests.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “Yeah, and some witnesses said they saw him freaking out outside the New York library, the day after Mitchell died.”

  “Oh.”

  “Okay, anyway, I gotta go check on a few things, but go ahead and listen. I’ll be back in about ten minutes to walk you out.”

  After he left, Robin put the headphones on and pushed the play button. She heard a rustling sound at first, and then Quentin’s voice. “So. This tape will be my formal confession to the police. But first I would like to make an apology.” Robin shifted in the chair, struck by the flatness of his voice, the lack of emotion. “I want to apologize to Robin and Eric Diamond. Robin Diamond in particular. I’m sorry, Ms. Diamond. Robin. They loved you very much.” Robin swallowed hard. Gripped the arms of her chic, cushioned chair. “They gave you a stable upbringing, with summer camp and family vacations. I bet you never woke up in the middle of the night at just five years old, realizing you were all alone in your house.” He coughed. Took a breath. “It’s interesting . . . I read in this book that Gabriel LeRoy had a nickname for April Cooper. He called her Baby Blue, which had been his name for the baby blanket he used to carry around with him everywhere when he was a little boy. He called her Baby Blue because she made him feel the way that blanket did. Comfortable. Safe. You had that with your parents, Robin. I never had a Baby Blue, so in my anger and confusion and hurt, I destroyed yours. That isn’t an excuse. If anything, it’s the opposite. I’m telling you that I did what I did for the most selfish of reasons.”

  Robin shut the recorder off. Rewound it. Played the last section again. “You had that with your parents, Robin. I never had a Baby Blue.”

  Rewound it again. Played it again. “You had that—”

  She hit pause. Then played it one more time, just to make sure—not about what Quentin had said, but about the sound in the background. It was kids, shouting. Same as she’d heard during their last phone conversation. Was he in the same park? Had he recorded this confession right after hanging up with her?

  Robin listened to the rest of the recording. “This next part is for the police. I am now formally confessing to the murder of Mitchell Bloom, may he rest in peace. And I am confessing to the shooting of Renee Bloom.” He didn’t mention friends and family, but as she could tell now, it didn’t matter. It was his tone, the hopelessness in it. “Mitchell Bloom had his back to me when I entered the kitchen. It was very late. Eleven P.M. It had taken me that long to get up the courage to talk to him, and I was still used to West Coast time. He was making a sandwich. Listening to the BBC World News on the radio. I said, ‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but if I could have a moment of your time.’ He was scared, then angry. Asked me what the hell I was doing in his house . . . I told him I wanted to talk about my mother. And he said, ‘Who gives a damn about your dead mother?’ I . . . I know I was an intruder. But I lost hold of my senses . . .” The story went on. Renee entering with the gun, the fight ensuing. “I was consumed with rage and jealousy and hurt,” he said. All in that same monotone, the voice you use to surrender.

  After he was through with the confession, Quentin apologized to Dean for ruining their wonderful life together, to his in-laws and baby niece for bringing them shame, and finally to “Summer Hawkins, for being undeserving of her friendship.” And then he started to cry. Deep, racking sobs that tore at Robin as she listened. Had the shouting children heard him? Had anyone heard him? After several seconds, he caught his breath. “I love you all,” he said before ending the recording. “Please don’t hate me.”

  Robin thought back to the phone call again, how his voice had cracked. Can we meet? Maybe in an hour? Please. I’ll meet you anywhere you’d like.

  Quentin had never met her at the hospital. He’d never seen her again. Had he recorded his confession in a public park, right after speaking to her? Had he known at that point that he was going to kill himself?

  Robin glanced at the door, then looked at the plastic bags on the table. She slid open the one that held his wallet and wedding ring. She removed the ring first—a thick band of yellow gold, very old-fashioned. She held the band up to the light, read the inscription inside: YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING, DC. “You did have your Baby Blue, Quentin,” she whispered. “You idiot.”

  She dropped the ring back in the bag, opened his wallet, and started going through it. Nothing that said “suicidal,” or “troubled,” or, for that matter, “fucked-up teen.” She slipped out a California driver’s license, two credit cards, an ID from the radio station he had worked for, $300 cash. A cloth handkerchief like her father’s father used to carry. No pictures. Who carried pictures in their wallets these days? Though she’d figured a guy with a cloth handkerchief might. There were a few business cards, many of them clearly from this trip. Someone from the New York Public Library. A woman named Edith Brixton. Detective Morasco. Nicola Crane. Behind the business cards, she found a movie ticket stub. She set it on the table and read the faded print, her throat tightening. 6/24/76. Easter Parade. A ticket stub
for her mom’s favorite movie. From close to twenty years before Quentin had been born. “Nothing weird about that,” she said out loud.

  Then she saw the name of the theater.

  She heard footsteps outside the door and shoved everything back into the wallet, the wallet into the plastic bag. By the time Morasco came in, everything was in its place.

  “Everything work out okay?” Morasco said.

  “Fine,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Behind him stood several other cops, plainclothes and uniform, among them a blond, handsome, devastated-looking man she recognized instantly as Dean Conrad. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said to her.

  “I’m sorry for yours.”

  She aimed her eyes at the ground and started to pass. “I’m going to tell you what I told these detectives,” he said quickly. “I spoke to Quentin a couple of days after the shooting. It was the last time I talked to him. He said he was feeling guilty because he hadn’t told the police everything about that night.”

  “Yes?”

  “He went to your parents’ house. He watched them from outside. Your mom left at one point—she kind of stormed out of the house and he followed her in his car until he lost her. Then he went back to the hotel. That was all he did.”

  “Why did he confess to killing them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t he tell the police that he’d been outside their house?”

  “I think he thought it made him sound like a stalker. Which he was, kind of . . . But he wasn’t a killer. I know Quentin better than anyone. And he isn’t. He wasn’t . . .”

  Robin looked into his eyes, red-rimmed, as though he hadn’t slept for days. I thought I knew my husband better than anyone too. She didn’t say it, of course. But she understood him. She knew how he felt. “Thank you,” she said. And then she quoted Eric. “The truth will out.”

  After she left the building, Robin quickly called her mother’s cell phone. “Oh hi, honey,” she said. “I can’t really talk. I’m on my way to the doctor.”

  “Oh, that’s okay,” Robin said, thinking of her mother’s home, her empty house. “I was just calling to see how the appointment went.”

  “I’ll let you know,” Mom said, and before long Robin was pulling into her mother’s driveway, barreling up the walkway, through the front door and up the stairs and into her parents’ bedroom where she rooted once again through her mother’s sock drawer. She was slipping the box out of the back of the drawer, her mother’s secret box. And she was pulling out the seashells and plastic mementos and tiny pieces of costume jewelry until she found what she wanted: the souvenir penny pressed into an oval and embossed with a star, the word Corsica. That had been the name of the movie theater on Quentin’s ticket stub. The Corsica. Easter Parade. 6/24/76. On the movie stub, there had been an identical star logo.

  “My God,” she whispered.

  “Robin?”

  She whirled around and saw her standing in the doorway. “Hi Nikki,” Robin said, calm as she could, the penny burning in her hand.

  Thirty-Seven

  June 20, 1976

  11:00 P.M.

  Dear Aurora Grace,

  We’re going to Death Valley. Elizabeth and me. Gabriel is in the back seat sleeping. But we’re not going to keep him around for long.

  We are in Elizabeth’s car, driving to the Gideon compound, where there is no phone and no TV and no helicopter surveillance. No cops. If we make it all the way there, Elizabeth says, I will be free. Elizabeth and I look so much alike, we could be sisters. Twins, even. She says I’ll fit right in with the other Gideons because they’re all blond like us. She says they will give me a place to hide without asking questions. And she’ll like it better there, with another girl to hang out with. Elizabeth says the Gideons hate the government, and therefore they will love anyone who is on the run from the law.

  Once we get to the Gideon compound, I will kill Gabriel and bury him in the desert.

  Aurora Grace, I hope there never comes a time in your life when circumstances force you to escape your own body. When you feel so powerless that your soul acts on its own and pushes out through your skin, just to get away from YOU. That was what happened to me at the Arco station. I told Elizabeth about it, and she understood. She said, “I have felt that exact thing.” But I think that in her case, it was for physical reasons.

  My beautiful, sweet future daughter, I don’t want to tell you what happened at the Arco station. I can’t find words to put on this page that won’t start me shaking and crying and wanting to die. What I can tell you is this: Gabriel definitely killed Jenny. Before Arco, I had the tiniest spark of hope that I had been right about hearing Jenny’s breathing over the phone, that she really was out there somewhere with people taking care of her, that Gabriel had only told me he killed her because he wanted to hurt me. Before Arco, I thought, He wouldn’t do that. Gabriel LeRoy may be a lot of terrible things. But he would never kill a little child. I was wrong, though. He would. He did. He killed his own half sister. And now, I feel such strangling hate toward him, I will never be able to breathe again until I snuff him out like a match.

  June 21, 1976

  3:00 A.M.

  Dear Aurora Grace,

  We are here, at last. Everyone is asleep, and I am using a lantern to see the page. There is no electricity. The water comes from a well, and the compound itself is just a few tents set up on the desert sand. It’s much smaller than I thought it would be, but just like Elizabeth said, there are llamas and chickens who live behind fences. They are so cute. I want to play with them all. It was cold when we got here, but Elizabeth and I built a fire in the pit. It warms my skin and smells like home is supposed to smell, and I may finally sleep for the first time in days. But not yet. I can’t sleep yet.

  Aurora Grace, I need to tell you something, and it starts with Gabriel sleeping. He was sound asleep and snoring in the back seat when Elizabeth first pulled through the metal gate. When she parked the car, he woke and said, “Are we there yet, Baby Blue?” And, to be honest, my heart melted a little. I blame it on all the unhealthy things I’ve been doing for the past few days—the lack of sleep and the lack of food, the drags off Elizabeth’s cigarettes and the swigs from her vodka bottle and constantly worrying about cops and the awful things I’ve seen, the way those things have changed me. I think all that poison mixed up in my head like ingredients thrown into a blender, and my brain drank it all and turned to mush. So when I looked at that monster, that child-murderer, he just looked like a boy to me.

  “We’re here,” I told him.

  Gabriel got out of the car, and he looked around. “Where are we?” he said.

  I told him Death Valley, and his eyes started darting around like he’d suddenly gone insane. I told him we’re at the Gideon compound, just like we talked about, and he got even crazier. “No, no, no, no. I never said we could come here.”

  So I said, “What are you talking about? This is the only safe place there is.”

  And he said it again. “I never said we could come here. I never gave you my permission to take us here.”

  And I said, “I don’t need your fucking permission.”

  He hit me. Again. Knocked me down, and it was like the ground came rushing up into the whole side of my body. My legs were all scraped up. My jaw ached from the punch. There was a ringing in my ear too, and when I put my hand up to it, it was wet from blood.

  Elizabeth had been looking for firewood, but she came running back when she heard him slug me. You could HEAR it from far away—that’s how hard he’d hit. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she yelled. Gabriel started yelling back. I was surprised no one in the tents were waking up because even with my ear the way it was, I could hear them loud and clear.

  Anyway, Gabriel’s gun was out of bullets, but Officer Nelligan’s was in the back seat of Elizabeth’s car, right next to where Gabriel had been lying. I crawled over to the car and threw open the door and gra
bbed that gun, and when Gabriel called Elizabeth the c-word, I shot him in the stomach. He fell to the ground. I pushed myself up to my feet and stood over him for a while, trying to figure out how I felt. He said something I could barely hear—my ear was still ringing. So I leaned in closer and he said it again: “Jenny is with my sister.”

  That hurt worse than my ear. It hurt worse than anything. At the Arco station, I’d watched him shoot his own baby sister as his dad stood there, pleading with him to stop. He said it again. “Jenny is with my sister.” I shot him in the face.

  Aurora Grace, it’s been about half an hour since I killed Gabriel. I’m sitting next to Elizabeth in front of the fire she built. I’ve shown her all these letters, and she says you’re a lucky girl to have a mother like me. She says I’m a good person, even though I’ve killed. She said God knows that. And she’s read the Bible cover to cover at least five times.

  After we get some more energy, we will burn Gabriel’s body. I’m drinking from her bottle of vodka, and my ear’s starting to feel better. Elizabeth is looking through Gabriel’s wallet, and she just showed me something she found in there: a scrap of paper with a phone number written on it, and the letter K. Elizabeth thought maybe Gabriel had a secret lover, but I told her that wasn’t likely. From what I knew of Gabriel, one lover seemed like too many. Then she said something that made me stop breathing: “Maybe he has another sister besides that little girl.”

  Jenny is with my sister. Was that what he had been trying to tell me—that she was alive and with some other sister, not the one he had killed? Was this number the same one that he’d been calling?

  4:00 A.M.

  It’s another hour later. I am finally feeling like I really could sleep. Elizabeth and I built a much bigger fire and dragged Gabriel’s body into it—a very long and exhausting ordeal. The fire’s burning higher than we thought it would, and the smoke is thick and choking. I put my head on Elizabeth’s shoulder. We talk about our short-term plans. Mine is to find a working phone somewhere and call the number on the scrap of paper. Elizabeth’s is to leave this place again forever. “I was away from here so long, I forgot,” she said to me. “My father hates me because I’m not a true believer. And some of my brothers are bad. I will need to protect you.” I don’t feel like I need protection, though. Not anymore. I feel like I can do the protecting.